Ig Nobel Prizes stiff particle physics-again

10/03/08

Nobelist William Lipscomb (left) and Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of the mathematical concept of fractals, drink Coca-Cola toasts to joint winners of the 2008 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize: A team that discovered Coke is an effective spermicide, and another that discovered it's not. Photo: Kees Moeliker / Annals of Improbable Research.

At last night's 18th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, webcast live from Harvard University, awards were handed out for a number of scientific achievements that--in accordance with the Ig Nobel motto--first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK.

Amidst the usual Ig Nobel antics--including a mini-opera called "Redundancy, Again," a Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobelist contest and 24-second technical lectures on topics from fractals to cryptography--prizes were given for research demonstrating that slime molds can solve puzzles, expensive fake medicine is more effective than cheap fake medicine, and the fleas that live on dogs jump higher than fleas that live on cats. The Peace Prize, fittingly, went to the The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

But once again, there was no Ig Nobel for particle physics.

We would not want to suggest that the winners of this year's Physics Prize were unworthy. Far from it: Two San Diego researchers were honored for a paper entitled "Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String," in which they proved mathematically that "heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots."

But we have to ask: Is this exclusion of an vital field of science--one that attempts to discover the origins and secrets of the universe itself, for cryin' out loud--not a disgrace?

(Or is it, on further reflection, a good thing? Just saying.)

For those who have not followed the history of this prestigious award, here's a list of recent physics winners:

2006: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.

2005: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.

2004: Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.